Weighed and Found Wanting
by saudade do coracao
Summary: Tris Prior is not cruel. But I am. [Character study of Divergent!Peter. Spoilers for whole series.]


**Rating:** M for violence and suicidal ideation.

**Trigger Warning:** Suicide, Violence

**Note:** After _Insurgent_, I thought that Peter was going to turn out to be Divergent. I really did. It would make him a perfect foil for Tris_. _Most of this was written before I read _Allegiant_, and what do you know, my characterization of Peter could still fit right in with his choice at the end.

I do not share Peter's ideas of suicide. If you are feeling suicidal, please reach out and get help. There is hope!

**Disclaimer: **I am not Veronica Roth. I am in no way affiliated with the _Divergent _books or movies. No profit is made from this story. The title is a biblical reference to Daniel 5:27. The idea of Peter having twenty-seven fears belongs to C. K. isback (without spaces) on FFN. I saw their summary for "Mr Twenty-Seven" and, though I didn't read the story, the idea stayed with me.

* * *

She's always telling me who she is. From the moment she threw her shirt at me and pitched herself off the roof, she's been telling me who she is. She looked me in the eye and told me people overestimate her by thinking she can't be cruel, and then she shot me in the arm. When I was pushed to the ground as a bullet whizzed over my head, I looked up to see her, her eyes telling me saving me had been a reflex, not a choice. When I asked her why Tobias came and she told me I didn't know anything—even then, she was telling me who she is.

But for all her telling me, she is deceiving herself. She is not cruel. If she was cruel, she would have shot me the second she had the chance. If she was cruel, she wouldn't have taken me with her. If she was cruel, she wouldn't have saved my life.

Tris Prior is not cruel. But I am.

* * *

Most of the other Dauntless don't notice her. But I do. From the moment she chose Dauntless at the Initiation, I've seen her. She's tiny and reserved and too gentle. The Stiffs have taught her well. But I understand the way Al and Four look at her sometimes. Tris Prior is good. She is innocent. She is purity dipped in this vat of darkness with us.

And they want to take care of her, shield that white light from any sullying influences. They will lay themselves at the altar of her goodness.

Goodness calls out to some men. It begs their protection. Not me. Tris Prior looks at me with her wide, guileless eyes, and she's asking me to destroy her.

She has no right to be good. Not here. Not now. Goodness has no place here. So I will take that goodness, and I will break it. Torch it. Slice it to ribbons.

If that breaks her as well, so be it.

If I am not good, she will not be, either.

* * *

In Candor, I thought everyone lied. They said they were telling the truth; they were blunt and direct; but they were hiding behind their words. I was. They gave me truth serum as a child, and it was like a thin veil over my thoughts. I could still think enough to lie right through it. So if I was doing it, I thought everyone else was doing it, too.

My parents were proud of me. I had a reputation for directness, for saying what I thought, for cutting to the heart of the matter. For a Candor, that is all you can ask.

I didn't mind exposing other frauds. But I would never expose myself.

And I thought everyone was doing it. Everyone was hiding secrets behind the guise of having none. There were dark terrors in everyone, but no one owned up to them. And if this happened in Candor, most truthful of all factions, I could only imagine what the other factions must be like. Everyone had secrets. Everyone was hiding. Goodness was a cloak for our true selves.

Then I turned sixteen and found out I was Divergent. I could resist truth serum and modify my behavior to make everyone believe I was telling the truth when I was really lying. But no one else could. I was different. They were all really as they seemed.

The only one with dark terrors inside was me.

* * *

I choose Dauntless because it is the best option I have. I have no use for honesty, for selflessness, for peace, for knowledge. If I knew what Erudite had become the choice might have been more difficult. But—no. Sitting and learning is not for me. All my life I have been cutting down people with my words. Now Dauntless will allow me to cut them down with my body.

But there is Tris Prior. Tris, of the selfless and modest faction. Tris, who takes the first leap. She is not strong. She is not ruthless. She should not be a threat to me. But she is.

Killing her is not a difficult decision. She is in the way of what I want, and disposing of her will be easy. Hating her will make it even easier.

But she does not go easily, and Four does not let her. She survives to become the first of all the Initiates.

There are twenty-seven obstacles in my fearscape. I am Divergent, and so I have practice with manipulating simulations. But twenty-seven is a lot, too many, and exhausting. My time comes out as average, level with the people who only have to battle fifteen fears. I can barely hold myself up when Eric injects the tracking serum into me afterward. I do not miss his look of scorn.

Even as a Dauntless, I am a failure.

She is awake during the attack on Abnegation. I had suspected—her time in her fearscape was just too good—but it is still a shock. Tris Prior is Divergent. We are not as different as I thought. She could be like me. She has been hiding, too. There could be darkness behind that front of innocence.

Then she shoots me in the arm instead of the head, and I know. I am the only one. Her goodness was not an act.

I wish the bullet had gone into my skull.

* * *

She is alluring. I know that now. It's perhaps not in her features, but in the way she holds her head, in the muscles of her arms, in her spine as she walks. She has chosen everything that she is, and she wears it like a badge of distinction. I was wrong about her. She is strong. She is powerful. She is far too clever.

But she is still good.

She saves my life. The bullet could have struck her when she moved to push me out of the way. I don't think she even thought about it. Afterward, she looked just as disgusted that she had saved me as I felt. So saving me was a reflex for her. Breathe, eat, sleep, save people.

I tell her that the thought of owing my life to her woke me up at night with the urge to vomit. But like the lying Candor I've always been, I'm not telling the whole truth. The thing that makes me sickest is this: we were dealt the same cards. But she took them and made them work for her. She made them into herself. With who she is, they can bring her all the way to the top. People will follow her to the end if that's what she decides she wants.

And then there's me, Peter the false Candor, the Dauntless with twenty-seven fears. No one will follow me. I play both sides to survive, but the strategy is swallowing me alive. If I live through this, no one will want me. No one will trust me. They will all know the thing I have been hiding for so long: who I am. It is all a lost cause for me.

And yet I am still alive. Alive because she willed it.

And that is why I choke on vomit when I should be sleeping.

* * *

When it is too late, I realize I want to be like her. Tris. I never really believed in goodness until her. She shows me that goodness is real, that it's a better path. It gives a person the certainty of doing the right thing, which rests more easily than guilt. In her, I see what it is like to be wanted, to be loved for what you are. I see what I could have been, maybe, if I had made different choices, had a different faction, been born somewhere else.

In the Bureau of Genetic Welfare, I hear about the memory serum. And I know, immediately, that I want it. I am not like Al, who was brave enough to choose his own death in recompense for what we did to Tris. I am not like Caleb, accepting death in exchange for forgiveness. I am too much of a coward to choose death as my atonement. But if I can just take that serum, I will forget my sins. I will forget that I have debts to pay. Maybe I will even forget how I like the feel of cartilage smashing under my knuckles, the warm kickback of a gun in my hands.

Four hands me the vial. For the first time in my life, I am not afraid before a major decision.

"Be brave," Four says.

I tip back the vial and drink.

And feel nothing.


End file.
